States Limiting Women’s Healthcare - Voting with Their Feet

After reports that applications from highest quality women to colleges and universities in red states was declining, I wondered if there were any significant movement of red state residents to blue states because of restrictions on abortions. Especially among the most cherished STEM experts. OK, some are laughing at the reality that men do not face limitations while women do. With a little tongue-in-cheek intention. Mississippi legislator, Sen. Bradford Blackmon, a Democrat, introduced a bill that would make it illegal for a man to ejaculate without an intention to conceive, making exceptions for masturbation solely to donate sperm to embryo-freezing facilities and sex during which contraception was used. Blackmon knows this bill won’t pass, but it makes a point. Personal freedom is most limited, on many matters – from purging DEI and “woke” education to birth control and abortion – in red states, reality they tout, either for religious reasons or distorted sense of “white pride.” And women are obviously heavily impacted.

Writing for the January 29th Los Angeles Times, columnist Michael Hiltzik examines what, if any, impact such restrictive laws, not seen in over half a century, have on outward migration from red states, despite lower costs of living in most. Headline: “The population exodus from antiabortion states is underway and may be picking up steam…

“It wasn’t a stretch to predict that the strict abortion bans in states such as Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arkansas would have demographic effects — driving residents out of those states and reducing migration from abortion-protective states.

“New research has validated that prediction and put meat on its bones. Most notably, economists at Georgia Tech reported in a paper published in [January,] that by mid-2023, the 13 states with total bans had suffered a combined net loss of an estimated 36,000 residents per quarter, or more than 144,000 per year. Over two years, that amounts to a net loss of more than one-third of a percent of the combined population of about 80 million in the 13 states with abortion bans…

“The magnitude of the population loss, the paper estimated, is equivalent to the outflow that would be caused by a 10% increase in local crime rates… The effect was more pronounced among single-person households than families, the researchers found.

That suggests ‘an outsized influence of reproductive rights on younger, more mobile populations,’ they wrote — possibly because the logistics of moving a family are more burdensome than for single persons, and also that single people may be more likely to be women of childbearing age… ‘State abortion policies alter the relative attractiveness of locations and the geographic distribution of human capital,’ the paper concludes.” You have to believe that the husbands and fathers with a young woman in the family are moving too. These may seem like small numbers, but the caliber of the women participating in that exodus is better educated and more productive. The last thing that most red states need is an exodus of educated people.

As Tom Kemeny, associate professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto, writes in the January 17th FastCompany.com, red states, notwithstanding relative success in Texas and Florida, red states are falling behind economically at an accelerating rate: “The wealthiest cities in the U.S. are almost seven times richer than the poorest regions, a disparity that has nearly doubled since 1960… and [the top five cities are [90] times wealthier than the poorest five places.” And those top cities are over-represented in blue states.

By indiscriminately herding brown-skinned people (how many are actually citizens?) into deportation camps with a flight out “somewhere” soon to follow… crops are rotting on the ground, restaurants are unable to stay in business, construction at a time need housing is quivering downward… most of which is based on fear… those who may be targeted just stay home. We are not creating new high value jobs. Educated women, likely to raise educated children, join the red state exodus of those whom Donald Trump is targeting by depriving them of the healthcare they need. Medical doctors, facing criminal prosecution for doing what they have been doing all their lives, are leaving in droves as well… reducing medical staffing where it is most needed.

I’m Peter Dekom, and by applying the harshest immigration measures this nation has ever used, Trump is turning the United States into a racist nation hell-bent on economic self-destruction.